Ex-Shin Bet chief calls for nonviolent revolt at weekly anti-government rally

Thousands gathered at demonstrations across Israel on Saturday night to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and to call for a deal that would return the remaining 59 hostages and bring an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, Times of Israel reported.
The main rally against the government took place at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, where demonstrators gathered to hear from a number of senior officials including the former heads of the Shin Bet and Israel Occupation Forces, while protesters demanding a hostage deal gathered at the nearby Hostages Square. The rallies then merged on Begin Road, as they do each week.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the evening’s events, Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held captive in Gaza, charged that Israel could sign a deal and bring the hostages home “tomorrow morning” if it wished to.
“Soldiers are being sent to war without end, without purpose, and without concern for the day after,” she said, standing alongside a group of captives’ relatives. “It is possible to sign a deal tomorrow morning. An entire nation is being deceived. We are told that military pressure will return the kidnapped — it only kills them.”
The “entire nation” wants an end to the war and the return of all the hostages, Zangauker asserted, accusing Netanyahu of “doing himself a favor, by agreeing, perhaps, to another ‘selection’ deal” — comparing the phased hostage release deals favored by Netanyahu to the Nazi practice of sending sickly Jews to their deaths and healthy Jews to slave labor.
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